Milani: I have no impunity as head of Army

Army chief César Milani has denied accusations made by the head of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), Horacio Verbitsky, concerning alleged moves to end investigations in La Rioja, and complained that his detractors were trying to use the media to create suspicion over his character.

In a military gazzette titled "General Milani refutes the CELS", the officer denied information implicating him in two serious crimes carried out while he was a lieutenant during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Controversy was caused this week when La Rioja prosecutor Michel Horacio Salman requested the case against him to be closed, while a Tucumán appeals court subsequently ruled that investigations into alleged human rights abuses must continue.

Milani also explained the process of an open judicial case in the province, which is investigating the kidnapping and torture of Pedro Adán and Ramón Alfredo Olivera.

"It has been proved that when the events occurred I was 21-years-old and that on the day of March 12 1977 I was not in charge, I could not have participated in the procedures that concluded with the detention of Mr Pedro Adán Olivera (the plaintiff's father)," Milani fired in the statement.

The general also complained about what he saw as "invented suspicions that are trying to be installed through the media," and added that it was not true that he "enjoyed impunity [from prosecution] due to being head of the Army."